Question about mixing and sound engineering

Goggalor1990

So I'm attempting to cover the song "In Pieces" by Linkin Park. I am not a rock singer by any means (unfortunately I have not practiced much of any distortion or adding grit to my voice), but this is a softer song by them and it's a very good range for me so I thought I would give it a go. My question is this: I am confused as to how to change the volume of the vocals on not just the entire track, but on parts. I feel like the volume is good on the verses, but on the chorus, where there is more distorted guitars, and especially on the last chorus where there is a wall of sound type thing going on I get drowned out considerably. I am using GarageBand and I will admit, I am definitely a newbie when it comes to sound engineering or any kind of mixing.

Here is the track as it stands now:

FurryMurry

Hi @Goggalor1990! I see what you mean on the last chorus. I never used GarageBand before, but Audacity is also a free program and it's very easy and intuitive to use. If you can, I would export the recordings from GarageBand and put them in Audacity. You can definitely raise or lower gain for any part of a recording pretty easily with that. I use Pro Tools for mixing, but I still use Audacity for mastering because it's so simple!

gotmixes

https://youtu.be/znTEMfcr30U

https://youtu.be/WENfigLGd54

Fader rides with automation or drawing in breakpoints on the volume automation -- I think every DAW lets you do it.

Given the near-unlimited track count on DAW's, there is a different solution: I would duplicate tracks and cut the alternating parts from one or the other, ending up with a "clean" track and a "dirty" track. This lets you treat each one separately (level and FX).

https://youtu.be/Haw9EGNQRio Duplicating tracks on GarageBand. Now just cut the "clean" parts from one and the "dirty" parts from the other.